IndyCar is in the middle of a three-week break and in the interim we have had Easter, an official test at Indianapolis Motor Speedway and a Honda test on the IMS road course. We still have over a week until cars return to the track for Grand Prix of Indianapolis practice and this period has allowed for a review of the first four races of the 2019 season.
There have been four different winners from four different teams through the first four races and seven different teams are represented in the top ten of the championship. How do the teams rank through the first quarter of the season?
1. Team Penske
It was a toss up over who should be on top after four races but carrying Team Penske to the top of the pecking order was Josef Newgarden.
Newgarden leads the championship but it is not so much that he is in first but he has a race victory, two runner-up finishes and a fourth place result. His 28-point lead is not insurmountable at this point of the season but it is a healthy cushion heading into the month of May and with double points on the table for the Indianapolis 500 a stellar day could see that lead increase to a staggering margin before he even reach the halfway point.
Add to Newgarden's success the pace of Will Power and it is hard to argue Team Penske is not number one through four races. The problem though is Power's results have not matched his pace. He finished third at St. Petersburg but that is his only top five finish this season. He dominated Austin, leading the first 45 laps and with Alexander Rossi hot on his tail. A caution before his final pit stop was going to shuffle Power down the order but when the gearbox broke as he was exiting his pit box a day that appear destined to end in victory or at worse second turned into a 24th place result, dead last. He struggled at Barber finishing 11th and he was not a factor at Long Beach, finishing seventh.
We come to the curious case of Simon Pagenaud. He has three top ten finishes in the first four races but he has not had a top five finish and he only had four top five finishes in his last 21 starts compared to 15 top five finishes in the 21 starts prior to that.
Overall, the team has a victory, two pole positions, two fastest laps, four top five finishes and nine top ten finishes out of a possible 12 through the first four races.
2. Andretti Autosport
Andretti Autosport is the other team that could have claimed the top spot but it was narrowly beaten.
Alexander Rossi might be slightly off his 2018 pace but he has been at the top at every race this season. Looking back to 2018, through four races Rossi was second with 145 points and 13 points behind Newgarden. This year, Rossi is second with 138 points and 28 points behind Newgarden. Like last year, Rossi has one victory but unlike last year, his Long Beach victory is his only podium finish with his next best results being a pair of fifth place results at St. Petersburg and Barber. Rossi was on the heels of Power for all of the first 75% of the Austin race and had the race remained green, Rossi would have given Power a challenge for the victory and at worst he would have finished second. Instead, he gets caught out by a caution, is shuffled back to 13th, lost a few spots on the restart and fought his way to ninth.
Ryan Hunter-Reay lost an engine in spectacular fashion at St. Petersburg but since then he has recovered with a third place finish at Austin, eighth at Barber and fifth at Long Beach. At Long Beach, Hunter-Reay was close to equal to Rossi but Hunter-Reay missed out on the final round of qualifying and started seventh. Andretti Autosport is the only team with multiple drivers in the top five in the championship.
Marco Andretti had a successful run at Austin, finishing sixth but his other three results have been less than stellar with a pair of 13th place finishes and a 14th. Zach Veach has been nowhere to be seen. His best starting position is ninth but his best finish is 12th. Veach has finished a lap down in three of the first four races.
3. Chip Ganassi Racing
Scott Dixon has been Scott Dixon. He has finished second, 13th, second and third and he has led two laps. The 13th at Austin was a case where he worked his way to the front, was positioned for a top five result only to be caught out when his teammate Felix Rosenqvist had his accident.
Dixon is third in the championship through four races. Last year, he was seventh in the championship and had one top five finish and he did not lead a lap until the sixth race of the season. Dixon is fine. The spring is his foreplay. He is just getting warmed up. He can turn it on at any moment and when he does the rest of the field is in trouble. Dixon is not going to slip up and it will be on the rest of the IndyCar lineup to remain consistent.
Going back to Felix Rosenqvist, he had an outstanding debut at St. Petersburg, leading 31 laps before finishing fourth but his last three races have been learning experiences to say the least. He looked good at the start of the Austin race but struggled with tire degradation and then had contact with James Hinchcliffe end in a heavy accident. He struggled with tire degradation again at Barber but salvaged a top ten finish and he could have been on one of the first two rows of the grid at Long Beach but had an accident keep him from advancing to the final round. He started 12th and couldn't get out of the middle of the field, settling again for a tenth place finish.
Ganassi has yet to break through but we know it is only a matter of time for Dixon and Rosenqvist has potential to ascend to a higher level this season.
4. Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing
Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing was not penciled in to sweep the front row of qualifying at any point this season but the team did that at Barber and Takuma Sato ran away with that race, taking the victory, his second in five races dating back to last season. On top of that victory, Sato has finishes of seventh and eighth and he is fourth in the championship. At no point in 2018 was Sato in the top ten of the championship.
Graham Rahal had a good day going at Barber only for throttle issues to end what could have been a 1-2 result for RLLR or at worst a double podium finish. Barber aside, Rahal has two top five finishes this season, both fourth place finishes at Austin and Long Beach. Rahal's qualifying results have also been promising. He has started in the top ten in every race this season. Last year, Rahal started outside the top ten in five of the first six races and he had qualified in the top ten only seven times.
RLLR is one of three teams with multiple drivers in the top ten of the championship after four races, joining Team Penske and Andretti Autosport.
5. Harding Steinbrenner Racing
Colton Herta was great in testing but I am not sure many counted on those testing results carrying over. It has.
Herta's victory at Austin will be the standout moment of his rookie season and he did catch a break when Power and Rossi had not made their final pit stops before the final caution but he was clearly the third best driver in that race after he had started fourth. He would have started in the top six at St. Petersburg had he not been penalized for interference. He still started 11th and worked his way to an eighth place finish.
The fuel pressure issue was out of his control at Barber but he started tenth and was in position for a top ten result at Long Beach before he slapped the barrier exiting turn nine.
Herta has shown pace, qualifying in the top ten in the last three races and being a contender for the second round of qualifying in each of the first four races. The pace is there but HSR is still a new team despite the increase in funding and increase in technical support from Andretti Autosport. Add to that Herta having rookie mistakes and you start to wonder what the ceiling for this team is in 2019.
Tenth in the championship with 88 points is not a bad start to a rookie season but consider that Herta coughed up at least 13 points at Long Beach, the difference between tenth and 23rd. If he finished tenth, Herta would have 101 points and be fifth in the championship. He would probably be fourth in the championship if the fuel pressure issue did not arise at Barber.
If the mechanical issues continue to pop up and Herta makes a few more mistakes this year might feel better than the final results show.
6. Dale Coyne Racing
There is a clear delineation between the top and the bottom in IndyCar this season. The top five are clearly the top five but the bottom half of the teams are harder to organize.
Dale Coyne Racing has a podium finish this year with Sébastien Bourdais and Bourdais had a great performance from 17th to fifth at Austin. Santino Ferrucci finished ninth in the first race of the season at St. Petersburg and he has made the second round of qualifying twice this season, with both DCR cars missing out on the second round at Long Beach by one position. However, Ferrucci has not gotten the results over the last three races and an error at Long Beach, missing turn one and stalling cost him two laps.
DCR has had a victory at this point of the season the last two years but 2019 has been a step back. The pace has not been there in qualifying. Bourdais started fifth at Barber but that is his only time advancing from the first round of qualifying. Ferrucci has shown plenty of pace but it has not transferred over at every race.
The team has been one of the quickest the last two years at Indianapolis but the season has not continued on an upward trajectory come the second quarter of the season. The team will have to flip that trend in 2019.
7. Schmidt Peterson Motorsports
You could put Schmidt Peterson Motorsports ahead of Dale Coyne Racing especially when taking into consideration that James Hinchcliffe is two points ahead of Bourdais in the championship and Marcus Ericsson is five points ahead of Ferrucci but the teams have had identical issues.
Hinchcliffe has three top ten finishes this season and he has advanced to the second round of qualifying twice. Ericsson on the other hand has not qualified in the top fifteen this season and he has only one top ten finish, a seventh place result at Barber.
The enemy of SPM has been the red flags this season. Ericsson has had red flags keep him from putting down a flying lap at St. Petersburg, Austin and Long Beach. The red flag also caught out Hinchcliffe at Austin and Long Beach.
I feel like we haven't seen SPM unhindered through the first four races. Hinchcliffe is doing fine but he has a history of strong starts and terrible finishes to seasons. Ericsson put on a great drive at Barber and had a better day at Austin only to be penalized for an unsafe release in the pit lane.
I think the results for this team will improve but I fear this team will experience a decline later in the season.
8. Meyer Shank Racing
This is not a full-time team but Meyer Shank Racing has run the first four races, is running the two Indianapolis races and has two top ten finishes after having its best finish be 12th in the 2018 season.
Jack Harvey's second year has been encouraging. He was quick at St. Petersburg, starting seventh and finishing tenth. He recovered after causing a red flag at Austin and starting on the final row to finish tenth again. At Barber, Harvey was not one of the frontrunners but he was solidly in the middle of the field, starting 12th and finishing 13th.
After the month of May, Harvey's season thins out. He and MSR will not be on track against until Road America at the end of June. He will have another month off before returning at Mid-Ohio at the end of July and he will have another month over before running the final two rounds at Portland and Sonoma.
This has been a good second season for MSR and with it looking at its third year at the Indianapolis 500 I think this is the year improvements have to be noticeable.
9. Carlin
Things have gotten better for Carlin in its sophomore season but there is plenty of work left to do.
The team picked up Patricio O'Ward on the eve of the season for the 12 open races in its second entry and the Indianapolis 500 in a third car. O'Ward has qualified in the top ten twice and he spent the entire Austin race in the top ten. He would have finished a few spots better than eighth in that race if O'Ward had not run out of fuel coming to the checkered flag. He has been the top qualifier and top finisher for Carlin in all three of his starts this season.
Max Chilton is still in a rut having not finished on the lead lap this season but his average finishing position through the first four races is better than through the first four races last year but a difference of 18.25 over 19.0 is little to celebrate.
Charlie Kimball has only run the St. Petersburg but he started eighth in that race and was running in the top ten before he had to make an unscheduled pit stop.
10. Ed Carpenter Racing
Through four races with Spencer Pigot and Ed Jones, Ed Carpenter Racing has not had a top ten finish this season. It has had a car make it through the first round of qualifying once and that is when Pigot made it to the Fast Six at Barber.
Pigot had good days at St. Petersburg and Austin, both 11th place results but he did not make the most of a promising qualifying result at Barber and finished 17th after botching a two-stop strategy. Jones has not been close to the front. His only lead lap finish was 14th at Austin and his best starting position was 15th at St. Petersburg.
The team has one more race until Indianapolis and Ed Carpenter's return; however, any level of Indianapolis 500 success cannot completely wash away what has been an otherwise disappointing season. An Indianapolis 500 victory might only make things worse when this team has been nonexistent on road and street courses this year.
11. A.J. Foyt Racing
If you thought Ed Carpenter Racing was bad, A.J. Foyt Racing is worse.
Tony Kanaan is 19th in the championship with his best finish being 12th. Matheus Leist is 23rd in the championship, worst of the drivers to run all four races, and his best result was 15th. Kanaan's best starting position is 19th. Leist advanced to the second round of qualifying at Austin but mostly for a timely hot lap before a red flag at the hands of his teammate.
Like ECR, Foyt heads with Indianapolis being a lifeline. Both Kanaan and Leist were quick last year and Kanaan spent a fair amount of time in the top ten and led laps before having to make an extra pit stop for a tire puncture. He charged up the field only to spin in turn two and end his race right after he made it back into the top ten. However, this team is far off the rest of the field and Indianapolis can only paper over so many cracks.
Who Is Out Of It Already?
Last year, Scott Dixon became the fifth champion since 1947 to not have a podium finish in one of the first four races of the season with his first podium finish coming in the fifth race of the season. He was the first champion not to score a podium finish in one of the first four races since Gil de Ferran in 2000.
However, Dixon did score a top ten finish in the first race of the season and his first top five finish came in the second race. Every champion since 1947 has had at least one top ten finish in the first four races with Danny Sullivan in 1988 being the only champion to not get a top ten finish until the fourth race. De Ferran's 2000 championship campaign is the only one where the champion took more than four races to score a top five finish and de Ferran's first top five finish was the fifth race.
Heading into the Grand Prix of Indianapolis, the fifth round of the 2019 season, six drivers have not scored a top ten finish yet: Spencer Pigot, Tony Kanaan, Zach Veach, Ed Jones, Max Chilton and Matheus Leist.
Another seven drivers have yet to score a top five finish: James Hinchcliffe, Simon Pagenaud, Marco Andretti, Jack Harvey, Marcus Ericsson, Patricio O'Ward and Santino Ferrucci.
The six drivers without a top ten finish, they are done. As for the seven drivers without a top five finish, Harvey and O'Ward will not be full-time and while it is not impossible that either could be champion it is highly unlikely. They will be added to the list. Ferrucci has been quick but a few races have gone against him. He will get a few more top ten finishes but I do not see the championship in his crystal ball. Marcus Ericsson is in a similar boat to Ferrucci. He has been quick but the results do not necessarily show it. He lost a top ten at Austin because of a drive-through penalty. He got a top ten at Barber but he retired after a radiator was punctured at St. Petersburg and he got a drive-through penalty at Long Beach for avoidable contact. Ericsson should improve but not enough for the championship.
That puts the list of drivers out of the championship picture at ten.
As for the other three drivers, Hinchcliffe is seventh in the championship despite not having a top ten finish and he is tied with Will Power, who has a podium finish. Pagenaud is a point outside the top ten and Andretti is ten points outside the top ten. History points that it is unlikely Andretti will make a championship push but with double points at the Indianapolis it could not be ruled out that a popular victory in that event would launch Andretti into the championship discussion.
Pagenaud is in a similar place to this time last year. At this point in 2018, Pagenaud was 15th in the championship and his best finish was ninth. He is four spots better and has finishes of sixth, seventh and ninth. We have been waiting for the Frenchman to break through as he has 13 top ten finishes in the last 14 races and he has 44 top ten finishes in the 54 races since the start of the 2016 season. He is putting himself in the right position but he has to take that next step and if it doesn't come in the second quarter of the season I think he will have to be written off.
Through four races and with 13 left to run, eight drivers have finished on the podium, Dixon, Josef Newgarden, Alexander Rossi, Takuma Sato, Ryan Hunter-Reay, Will Power, Sébastien Bourdais and Colton Herta. Add to those eight drivers Hinchcliffe, Pagenaud and Andretti and we are looking at 11 drivers left in the discussion with 76.47% of the season remaining.
Where Do We Stand On This Rookie Class?
Colton Herta seized attention with his victory in the second race of the season at Austin but his two retirements at Barber and Long Beach have kept him within striking distance of the rest of the rookies. Felix Rosenqvist may have finished fourth in the season opener at St. Petersburg but his next best finish has been tenth in the last two races and it has him eight points behind Herta.
Of the other three rookies that will be contending for rookie of the year honors, Patricio O'Ward has scored more points per race than Marcus Ericsson and Santino Ferrucci. Five points cover the three rookies with Ericsson on top with 61 points in 16th and O'Ward and Ferrucci are level on 56 points but O'Ward has run one fewer race than the other two. O'Ward has averaged 18.667 points per race, compared to Ericsson's 15.25 and Ferrucci's 14 points per race.
O'Ward will miss three more races this season but he will be in the car for the next four races. He will miss Texas and run the next four races before missing Pocono. His season will end with Gateway and Portland with Charlie Kimball returning to the second Carlin entry for the Laguna Seca finale.
I think Ericsson and Ferrucci are both going to score better results but the second quarter of the season is an unknown to the two drivers. Neither has raced either Indianapolis configuration, Ferrucci made his debut at Belle Isle last year and neither has raced at Texas. O'Ward has raced on all three of the IMS road course, IMS oval and Belle Isle. I think O'Ward could end up being ahead of both Ericsson and Ferrucci after the second quarter of the season despite missing a round.
Will any of those three go up and challenge Herta and Rosenqvist? It is difficult to see.
If anything were to happen I could see Herta falling back to the rest of the rookie field if he repeats some of the inconsistency that befell him in Indy Lights. The Barber retirement is not on his shoulders but he did over step the boundary at Long Beach and it cost him a possible top ten finish. Herta has never raced at Belle Isle and with that being a doubleheader weekend it doubles the chances of things going wrong.
While Rosenqvist has not replicated his St. Petersburg result and he struggled with tire degradation at Austin and Barber, I think he is still in prime position for rookie of the year because of his consistency. He is not a driver that tears up many race cars or grazes a barrier unexpectedly. It might be a case of Rosenqvist does less to lose rookie of the year and that is how he ends up with top honors. I still think the results are coming and he had great pace at Long Beach. A victory is not out of the realm of possibility but we need to see another weekend where Rosenqvist is on it from first practice, it carries over through qualifying and has him in a great starting position when the green flag falls.
What To Watch For In Quarter Two?
It is going to sound hyperbolic that the championship is going to come down to what happens at Indianapolis but let's lay it out:
Team Penske has won four consecutive Grand Prix of Indianapolis. Josef Newgarden has a 28-point championship lead. Alexander Rossi is second in the championship and while his Grand Prix of Indianapolis results have improved from tenth to eighth to fifth in his first three years Rossi has been stellar in the Indianapolis 500, the double points affair.
If Rossi has another good day on the IMS road course and continues to be phenomenal in 500-mile races the championship could swing into his favor but if Newgarden continues Team Penske's dominance on the IMS road course and has the chips fall in his favor in the Indianapolis 500 we could be looking at a scenario where Newgarden could extend his championship lead to over 60 points or perhaps even 75 points. In 2016, Simon Pagenaud did not have a great Indianapolis 500, finishing 19th but he still left that race with a 57-point championship lead after two runner-up finishes and three victories in the first five races.
Outside of Newgarden and Rossi, we know Scott Dixon will be in the conversation. He has finished runner-up the last two years in the Grand Prix of Indianapolis and it has been 11 years since his one and only Indianapolis 500 victory. Last year, Dixon used the month of May to lift his championship aspirations. It was the start of six consecutive top five finishes and 12 top five finishes in the final 13 races. He took the championship lead at Texas and never looked back. Dixon does not have to win but if he does, especially the Indianapolis 500 with double points, it feels like a successful title defense will be in his future.
Besides those three drivers, it will be key to see if any driver can climb back into the championship discussion. Newgarden holds a 70-point advantage over Ryan Hunter-Reay and Hunter-Reay is fifth in the championship. Nine points cover Hunter-Reay in fifth and Simon Pagenaud in 11th with 18 points covering Hunter-Reay and Marco Andretti in 13th. A May dominated by the likes of Newgarden, Rossi and/or Dixon could set the championship battle for the entire summer but if Hunter-Reay can re-create some of his 2014 magic or if Will Power can win his fourth Grand Prix of Indianapolis with a respectable Indianapolis 500 performance, it will not be as clear cut into June and July.
Specifically to Indianapolis, Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing has been better through four races in 2019 than the first four races last year. Add to the equation Allen McDonald, the man associated with impressive qualifying pace at Indianapolis, and this could be the year RLLR reinserts itself in the championship battle. Takuma Sato won the Indianapolis 500 two years ago and Graham Rahal has an encouraging record in the Grand Prix of Indianapolis. If RLLR can repeat its Barber performance on the IMS road course, have both cars in the top five and combine that with an exponentially better Indianapolis 500 Sato and/or Rahal could make the title fight even murkier.
I don't want to dive into Indianapolis 500 qualifying too much here because we are still over a week and a half away from the first practice session on the oval and we really do not have a clue who will be contending for pole position, who has Fast Nine hopes and who will be on the bubble but it is important to remember that bumping is not as cut and dry as writing off the least sexiest teams on paper. A lot of people did that last year and penciled Juncos Racing with Kyle Kaiser, James Davison in a third Foyt entry and Jay Howard in a third SPM car to be on the outside and miss the race and all three made it while James Hinchcliffe didn't and Graham Rahal was in the bubble discussion.
Indianapolis 500 qualifying is fickle and it literally can be decided by the way the wind blows. Keep an open mind over who will be biting their fingernails.
Covering All Motorsports. From Indianapolis to Le Mans, Daytona to Monaco.
